


The Match and the Butterfly: A Kiss.

by cookiesintheoven



Category: SHINee
Genre: Choi Minho - Freeform, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Protective Minho, SHINee - Freeform, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27052123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookiesintheoven/pseuds/cookiesintheoven
Summary: A one shot about that kiss with which you finally give in to your feelings.
Relationships: Choi Minho/Original Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Match and the Butterfly: A Kiss.

**The Match and the Butterfly: A Kiss.**

There it was.

Suspended, frozen in time. Right on the verge. On top of the knife’s edge.

About to fall.

Down my cheek.

That tear was followed by many more, it could not walk its path down my face alone.

It resembled this moment. It was meant to be the first of what was to come.

This second stretched into eternity as I made up my mind. It was the instant in which I decided to light up the proverbial match that would start the fire, that would burn it all.

It would be just a simple thing. Just lips. Lips like butterfly wings, batting softly, slowly, rising far and beyond expectation, sending movement waves into forgotten space, fluttering away unknown consequences that could change the course of my life.

It is so easy, so quick, that it almost does not feel real when you finally cave in and do something you have been avoiding for a long time. In that split second, as you take the match and scratch it to create a flame, when you decide, you realize you were going to do it all along.

I had known it from the get-go. I always knew, deep down, that one day I would give in. The wait had only been me cutting wings off the butterfly, buying time, and despising myself for doing so. It was delaying the aftermath, stilling the waves of the ocean in which I was meant to drown.

I could feel the warmth I yearned for radiating off his body that was only a meter away from mine. The intense force of his stare as he watched my turned back was pulling me back. I stopped myself before reaching the door handle and heard the hitching of his breath in the silence.

They fell in a second, from my eyes, but took an eternity to roll down my cheek. These tears, the decision, this kiss.

It would take a moment to happen, but its trail would follow me for longer than I wished for.

I knew where my hands would go to when I turned to face him. One to cup his neck and grasp his hair. One around his waist, to keep him close.

There would be no escape for any of us because, as much as we had tried to be friends and only that, to respect the lives we had built and led so far; as much as we struggled to stop before it began, every denial was a hidden surrender.

His mouth contorted into something akin to physical pain when he saw the tears pooling in my eyes.

I knew he knew I was not hurting because of him.

He knew what those tears meant.

I knew his pain was not my fault either.

Our faces were just a mirror of the grief our joy would bring to others, of what our yielding to these feelings would cause. A reflection of the destruction to come.

I came to him as he reached for me. We had always been like magnets, him and I, types of gasoline that had finally found their fire.

His hands cupped my face and before he leaned in, his thumbs brushed away the tears that I had cried for another.

He held me so carefully his touch did not even register against my skin so I tightened my grip on him so he would, too, hold me closer. He held me warily, as if one wrong movement could make me slip away, as if afraid I would change my mind the moment my head registered what my heart was doing with my body. As if it were just a dream, a fickle fragment of imagination in which we both could exist for a limited time too short to be fair.

His lips hovered over mine in hesitation, quietly brushing my skin, a match that finally falls on kindling, the fluttering with which it all begins.

It was not a sound that came from his throat but from his soul, that hushed whimper that was the melody of our long-time-coming submission.

There were months of talking and getting closer and becoming friends consumed in that kiss. All the phone calls, texts, video calls, selfies exchanged, pen-written letters and silly gifts that traveled across continents just to say “I’m thinking about you, too” came to life again as his lips brushed mine, each time bolder than before.

It all flashed in my head like a movie scene, the montage sequence in a drama when the heroine realizes something that changes the plot and rewrites the story: the first time I came to visit and how he waited for me at the airport hidden behind his sunglasses and his mask and the world’s biggest most obnoxious baseball cap, how warm these hands that were now tangled in my hair had been when they first took mine to guide me through a crowd, his smiles and his goofy grin on my computer screen when he made me laugh, all the jackets he had lent me and all the food he had wasted attempting to cook for me, the way my heart raced every time his eyes lingered on my face a second longer than they should and how he stiffened when I touched him and he did not expect it.

His teeth sank into my bottom lip and I went limp against him because I knew he would hold me up, all resistance melted, all doubts evaporated, safe in those arms.

I let him do it. Let him walk me backward until backing me up against the door I should have crossed minutes ago. I let him slam me against it, shutting it again, closing it for good measure with our own bodies.

No undoing it. No way out. Not that I would ever want either of those.

I cupped his sharp jaw in my hands and molded all of me to him, thinking that if I got close enough, maybe we would not ever be apart again. Because now that we were not keeping our distance like we used to, there was only the world to come between us. And we are both too competitive to let it get our best.

We fought our battle with that kiss, lost in it, and won against it when there was nothing left but us standing.

His lips rested on my forehead and I closed my eyes that were now dry from sorrow.

“I have imagined this a thousand times, but it was never like this”, his deep accented voice came from above me.

“미안해” I apologized, for what exactly I did not know, but I was sorry for a lot.

“아니요, no, in my head it was not this good” I could hear his smile and it made me giggle in return.

“But I’m crying!” I leaned back to look at him and show him my puffy face, “and I’m ugly”.

It was the most childish of complaints but what I had done was way too serious to start thinking like an adult just yet, at least not while he was holding me.

“But 좋아해. And I like you a lot” he pouted in return.

“That’s not an answer to what I said, Choi” I smacked his chest before resting my head on it and kissing the spot I had hit.

“It is my answer to everything,” he said simply. Under my ear, his heart was hammering loudly.

“왜? Wh-?”

I looked up and tightened my grip around him.

“When they ask why I was friends with you for such a long time. Why I waited for you to decide. Why I did something so terrible to another person. Why I kept you both close yet far and hurt you for it at times. Why I came back every time you made me mad. I like you, that’s what I’ll say.” I pushed against him and he caught my meaning, instantly stepping away.

I simply stared at him and his expression, almost defiant in his conviction.

This person. The one that had made my fragile butterfly heart flutter all across the universe since the moment I had first laid eyes on him.

This man. My match. Both my fire and my partner.

I took a step to cover the distance between us again, Just a simple action and yet so much meaning.

My arms went back around his waist, where they wanted to belong, and I leaned on him as I went on my tiptoes and neared my mouth to his ear.

“사랑해.”

It is so easy to say love. It is so difficult to know you thoroughly mean it. These are words that weigh like an anchor, ones I could not and would not take back. Words heavy enough to moor me to this circle inside his arms, against his chest, this little spot that I had chosen and been given.

His lips found my lips, no tears in-between anymore. Why cry when the decision had already been made? Why cry if the hurt it would entail would not change the outcome? Hurting, like waiting, was worth this kiss.

“Te quiero” he whispered against my mouth, imprinting his love on tender skin.

“I was waiting for you to say it,” I told him with a shy smile.

“I was waiting for you to say it” he replied, a crinkle in his eyes.

I would have waited forever. I would hurt all my dues.

For this kiss, for this short everlasting moment.

For him.

“Say it again” he begged softly in my ear and yet tickled my side.

“No, you say it again!” I squirmed away from him and ran for his bedroom, knowing full well he would follow me. He always did.

I did not get to cheekily slam the door on his face as I planned. He was fast and in a breath, he had tackled me, my back hitting the bed with a thud. Minho fell right on top of me, managing to absorb the impact with his arms.

I looked up at him from the cage he had built around me with his body and realized I was trapped inside my whole world, staring at my sun, who smiled brightly back at me.

“사랑해” he murmured as a “te quiero” escaped me.

This was the reason. It had been hidden in plain sight, simply meant to be revealed.

It was because we loved that we had fought it and denied the feeling.

It was because we loved we had hurt each other. It was because we loved each other we would hurt others.

It was love. Easy, so simple. So difficult and complicated. Brief, at least for now, perhaps about to be for always.

It was love and it was me. The little butterfly who had finally let her wings bat like her heart was fluttering, despite whatever rippling effects would come from her flight, from her choice.

It was love and it was him. My match. The one who ignited everything. The flame that was the reason for the fire inside me.

There it was.

Suspended, frozen in time. Right on the verge. On top of the knife’s edge.

About to fall.

Into its rightful place.

It was then, when his kiss found a path down my neck, softly tracing its warmth down my body; when his hands found mine and he laced our fingers together above my head, the ring on his thumb biting into my skin; when my legs came around him and molded him against me; it was then, when his intense stare found its way into my soul, that I knew we would be burning for all eternity.


End file.
